Last Week’s Reads

217. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles by Jennifer 8. Lee

 Lee undertakes a difficult challenge: find out all there is to know about Chinese food. I am happy to say she lived up to the challenge. I learned more about General Tso’s Chicken and fortune cookies and soy sauce than I thought I ever wanted to know. All in all, it was an entertaining trip through Chinese American dining.

 218. Belong to Me by Marisa de los Santos

I wouldn’t call this book literary fiction; most people, I suppose, would call it chick lit. But it is a little more than that. The characters are a little more complex than you might think and there are all those multisyllabic words.  Yes, it is a little more than your typical chick lit.

But don’t go expecting Tolstoy either.  Cornelia, our main character, decides to move from the decidedly high culture big city to the ‘burbs, though she’s not quite clear about her rationale. She and her husband try to fit in and make friends, but their new neighborhood can be disdainful of the bright and clever city dwellers. Cornelia makes an enemy before she makes a friend; her enemy, Piper, seems out to make Cornelia miserable. But Piper suddenly becomes the chief caregiver of her best friend and the new experiences Piper has with her friend’s suffering soften her heart.

219. Various Miracles by Carol Shields

I’ve had this book on my wishlist forever and I finally acquired this copy a good while back, but somehow I never got around to reading it. Then the Canadian Authors Bookbox arrived and I found I had almost nothing to put into it for trade. Thus this read yesterday.

I’ve read Shields before I had no recollection of this kind of Shields, a Murakami-ish Shields, full of magic and mysticism and the odd and strange. I loved this book of short stories where the unexpected always happens, just like in the real world, and who knows why. I loved the first story in the book, the title story, a simple listing of all the miracles in the world, miracles in the broadest sense of the word. “Mrs. Turner Cutting the Grass” takes us through the twisting life of Mrs. Turner, a life that winds and bends, making stops she’d never anticipate, that ends with Mrs. Turner, yes, cutting the grass. A girl who is accidentally locked inside a church, a church used only once a year. A man who writes satire watching his wife slowly die. A couple who receives yearly Christmas cards from a man they met for a few minutes twenty-five years earlier. Very real, very wacky stories. 

220. Dewey: The Small-Town Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron with Bret Witter

In general, I hate sappy stories. I loathe abject sentimentality. I hate sweet little stories where everything ends happily ever after and the main characters dance off together into the sunset.

Two exceptions: Romances and animal stories.

Dewey is an animal story that, happily, I will exempt from my sappy stories rule. Dewey is a stray cat who is found one icy morning in the drop box of the public library. Dewey wins the hearts of the librarian, the library staff, the library patrons, and, finally, the entire town. And what a cat he is! Somehow he manages to help farmers troubled by a bad economy, disabled children, lonely people, and depressed people, and all by just being a kind and gentle cat.

Yes, the story reeks with sappiness, but I loved reading it.